Managing duplicate records with RE & LO integration

Lanetta Gilder

Hello!

I hope all is well. Can someone advise on the how to manage duplicate records with the Luminate Online and Raiser's Edge integration? At the organization working with, there are several "anonymous" records with only email information that came over from Luminate. I'm not sure if its because of the original integration or not, but it apparently created multiple records with only email addresses and nothing else (no first or last name). Is it best to clean up the records in RE instead of Luminate? With the current situation, is it advised to de-dup/merge the "anonymous" records in RE and then manually add the various email addresses with no name to Luminate? Please advise. 


How do you manage records that only obtain email information in Luminate? Do you not bring them over in to RE? For email addresses with no name, how would you handle them in Luminate?


Looking forward to the responses and feedback! Thanks again! Take care, be safe and have a good day!

Patti Posey

Hi Lanetta,


All merging of records and deleting should be done in RE.  Monthly I will run the Duplicate Constituent Management tool in RE and dedup from there. If you go to the Duplicate Merge Management in LO you would see a message that says Duplicate management is performed exclusively in your CRM/RE . I do run a duplicate email report in Tasks in Luminate and merge those in luminate.  Hope this helps.


Patti Posey

Stamford Hospital Foundation

Lanetta Gilder

Hi Patti!

I hope all is well. Thanks for the feedback and response. I greatly appreciate it. 


There are several records in LO that are in RE that have email addresses only with the name of anonymous or its the email address and an initial or its an email address and no name. I'm working on cleaning up records in RE. There are over 700 records in RE named anonymous, and I'm merging them all to one record. What's considered to be best practice? Should manually add the email addresses back in to LO and reject them when the system tries to bring add them back to RE? I haven't tried to dedup records in LO yet. 


Thanks again for the feedback! Take care, be safe and have a good day!


Thanks!

Lanetta

Patti Posey

Hi Lanetta


Sounds a bit confusing.  Let me know if I got this right.


1.So you have 700 records in RE that are named anonymous with emails?

  This is what I would do. 1.  For me, I am not sending emails to anonymous people with no information and who haven't donated, So I would just delete those records or mark inactive.  2. Anonymous records with gifts in them - I would take one anonymous record and make it my primary anonymous record, call it something like Anonymous 2020.  I would merge just the gifts from the other anonymous records in to that one record and delete the other record or mark inactive.  I prefer to delete.  There is not point in having all these anonymous records with nothing in them except an email and/or gift.  Going forward what I do is every January I create a record name Anonymous CY2020 and so on.  Any anonymous donation that comes through gets processed in to that record.  So at least I have a list of anonymous gifts for the fiscal year..


2.  The anonymous records in Luminate if they are NOT linked to RE and have no gifts I would just delete them in Luminate.  If they are linked and have a gift in them, push them down to RELO and link them to that primary Anonymous record and reject all the information on the Luminate side.


I Hope this helps.  Feel free to call me if you want to talk it out.


Patti Posey

203-276-5975


 

Lanetta Gilder

Hi Patti!

I hope all is well. Thanks for the feedback and response. 


To answer your question: 1. Yes, there are over 700 records named "anonymous" with only email addresses attached to them.


The database that I inherited has information in it when they used Salesforce and possibly some other database. In addition to that, all data that came through Luminate Online, lives in RE. Thinking similarly to what you stated in the recent post, I was thinking about deleting all "unusual" records that are email only in RE (Unusual = anonymous with no gifts, no last name only first name, initial for a last or first name, last name only no first name ect). 


Staff mentioned to me that they would like to add the email addresses back into Luminate to continue to communicate with them; however, they won't have a name attached to the record. I don't think that's a good idea. 


If I have any other questions or concerns, I'll contact you. Thanks for sharing your contact information. Take care, be safe and have a good day!


Thanks!

Lanetta

Patti Posey

FYI,  If they want to keep the emails, you will need to keep all the records with the emails on it!  You can't put 700 emails on one record.  What you can do is put them all in a group in Luminate and They can be your Anonymous No Name group for emailing.  You can use it to send emails or to not include this group in emails.  You can keep the ones that donate and get rid of the ones not.


Patti Posey

Paula Best

Hi Patti


I'm new to the RELO integration as well and just read through your information provided here. I've run into a real mess too and trying to fix. Your comment in one post caught my attention and not sure what you meant or how you "push" something. Can you explain?  Thanks as well for all your information. It helps more than you know.


2.  The anonymous records in Luminate if they are NOT linked to RE and have no gifts I would just delete them in Luminate.  If they are linked and have a gift in them, push them down to RELO and link them to that primary Anonymous record and reject all the information on the Luminate side.